Superb acting as you'd expect - Christ the two 'marquee' players are good - but the stagey direction is a problem, static and ploddingly invested in the hoariest imaginable framing/intercutting techniques. Zowie, they're using surveillance footage! Wowsers, a whole scene is shot from a 'helicopter,' forcing the actors to perform in totally unsustainable physical postures! It's 'screen direction is not stage direction' 101 and it mars some astonishing scenes, particularly the finale, which should be deadly chaos but comes off as limp stage comedy, goddamnit.
But then Tennant delivers the prince's dying words as well as I've ever seen or heard them. No surprise there: TV actors learn to act on a specific physical scale that suits the camera (and the intelligence of his performance bespeaks a theatre actor's studied familiarity with the textual universe). Of all things, Star Trek and Dr Who end up contributing something extraordinary to Shakespeare. What a world.
It's here, by the way.
(And if you wanna see TV/stage direction and acting beautifully balanced, try The Singing Detective, in which lead performer Michael Gambon and director Jon Amiel prove that God exists, and She's from the fucking UK.)
